


the last of a thousand goodbyes

by trvelyans



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:01:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21679438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trvelyans/pseuds/trvelyans
Summary: Neva Surana has a day left in Denerim until she leaves for Antiva. What does she say to the man she's leaving behind?
Relationships: Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Alistair/Neva, Alistair/Surana (Dragon Age), King Alistair/Female Warden
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	the last of a thousand goodbyes

Winter has come to Denerim.

When Neva Surana awakens on her second last day in the city, the sight that greets her as she peers through the window of her guest room in the Royal Palace is a thick blanket of fog cloaked over the city that she can scarcely even see through the flurries of snow that fly past the glass. She’s wearing a heavy cotton nightgown with stockings underneath and she is still, somehow, shivering so much her teeth chatter, even with a fire roaring in the hearth nearby.

Antiva will be a warm reprieve.

But there is still work to be done before she leaves Ferelden. It’s only been a month since the Archdemon was slain, and yet she is itching to escape. With every step she takes, she’s reminded of the wound on her leg the creature gave her that is healing painfully slowly; she cannot leave her room without someone asking something of her. She thought she was meant for a life like that, but for the first time ever, now that she has the freedom… perhaps a break would be nice first. And maybe she deserves it. That’s what Zevran has been saying, anyway.

Tomorrow. Today, she has loose ends to tie up, and people to say goodbye to. One person in particular, actually.

If she can get an audience with him.

She readies herself for the day carefully. She dons her cleanest pair of pants and the shirt that is least stained with blood; the maids knock on her door shortly after her day begins with her armour freshly cleaned and her boots freshly shone and she layers those over top, too, and even then it isn’t much to combat the cold. She braids her hair and then unbraids it, tying back half and leaving the other loose around her shoulders, proudly showing off the points at the end of her ears for anyone who might care to look. A few stray strands of hair tickle her nose, and she pins them back with a careful eye, ensuring that she looks her best even though she knows that she doesn’t need to.

It’s Alistair. He’s the first man she kissed, the first man she ever slept with, the first man she ever loved. She hopes he isn’t going to be her last, because that would make leaving even harder than she already knows it’s going to be.

And it’s _not_ Alistair, even, she reminds herself. It’s King Alistair, and she should be more careful to remember that.

It will be strange to leave Ferelden. She lived in the Circle Tower for the first nineteen years of her life and now, shortly after her twenty-first birthday, she’s sailing to Antiva, a place she’s only heard about from stories that Zevran tells, a place with sands warmer than the thickest fur coat and with water as blue and as dazzling as the sky that hangs above it, a place far away from everything she’s ever known and everybody she has that she can leave behind.

She swallows the lump growing in her throat, takes one last glance at herself in the looking glass, and then heads for the door, grabbing her staff that leans against on the wall next to it before pushing through shoulder-first.

She’s immediately hit with a blast of cold air from an open window at the end of the hall, and she gestures towards it to a nearby guard. “Can you close that, please?”

He nods stiffly and hurries towards it, slowly closing it so that it doesn’t slam shut. Neva wrinkles her nose but continues on, still, somehow, feeling shy under the gazes of all the King’s men.

She shouldn’t feel that way, and she knows it. She’s the new Warden-Commander of Ferelden and the woman who defeated the Archdemon and she still feels like she needs to present herself a certain way, hold her head high, never look too dangerous. Even though Alistair – King Alistair, she reminds herself again – has given her free reign of the castle for the length of her stay, she still feels like someone is going to take it upon themselves to deny her, the Templars roaming the halls during the day especially. Maker knows that Chantry would probably find fault with her nearly sacrificing herself for the country if she acted out too much.

Neva clutches her staff tighter to her side and winces, trying not to think about that. As of tomorrow evening, she’ll be free of the Chantry – for a little while, at least.

Maybe that’s why she’s leaving. She doesn’t want Knight-Commander Greagoir to come calling.

She has a _new_ calling now, and it’s with the Wardens.

Eventually, she stops to ask one of the maids if King Alistair is awake already, and the short elven girl smiles brightly at her and nods. She’s one that Neva has seen many times throughout the palace, occasionally escorting the king to and from dinner or around the training grounds to see how the guards and the knights are faring (which Neva only knows because she often stops there herself). That’s one of the many things she appreciates about Alistair – he’s always so kind to the servants when she’s sure many nobles wouldn’t be. “The king is awake already, my lady,” the girl says, pulling Neva from her thoughts. “He should be dining right now if you wish to join him.”

Neva hesitates for a moment and then shakes her head at the girl. It’s odd. She shouldn’t be so uncomfortable with the reverence some the servants treat her with, but she is. Some of them can’t be much younger than she is. Some of them are even older. Nevertheless, she forces a smile. “Thank you, but I will… I suppose I will let him dine without me, and I can come find him later on in the afternoon.”

The girl smiles and walks off, a small skip in her step that carries her a little easier than before.

Neva has other things to occupy herself with in the meanwhile, or at least she forces herself to believe that. She’s been wanting to peruse the library before she leaves - she’s certain there are a few tomes about Ferelden history there she can read. Maker knows she doesn’t want to go outside, not in this weather.

The Circle failed to prepare her for more things than it didn’t.

And she _does_ spend her morning and afternoon in the library, genuinely enjoying herself, lost between the stacks of leather-bound books with dusty pages and the occasional scrap of paper left behind by a Chantry scholar covered in scratched-out ink and messy doodles. She even asks one of the maids for a paper and quill of her own, though she can’t write anything. She starts to write a letter to Alistair instead, in case she can bear to face him, but… she must. She has to.

She owes him that, at least.

It was wrong, going to Eamon behind his back so they could work together to make Alistair king. It was wrong, and yet she did it anyway. But Alistair is meant to be king. He’s kind and he’s smart and he’s brave, and most of all he’s _honest_ and pure and deserves it, and that is the kind of ruler Ferelden needs. Someone who has the country’s best interests at heart even at the cost of his own. And maybe he can make a difference that Anora or Loghain or any other ruler would never seek to – perhaps he can change the treatment of city elves, make treaties with the Dalish, protect mages and condemn the Chantry…

And this way, he can stay out of danger; he can have an entire battalion of guards to protect him until the day he dies.

It was selfish and it remains selfish, but she knows that if they were Wardens together it would take little to convince her that they should leave the Order after the Blight and live amongst themselves until the taint finally catches up to them. She’s tired, as he is tired, but she cannot give up, and if she had him – who is her _everything_ right – she would. There’s nothing else she could think to want.

But there’s a world out there and people that need saving and they’re worth more than her own happiness. In peace, vigilance. That’s what the Wardens claim, after all.

And it will be better for the both of them in the long run, she tells herself, fiddling with the sleeves of her shirt while her eyes scan absently over the pages of an open book. They’re not children anymore – they can’t afford to spend time and energy on their puppy love. There is no room for love when people like Loghain and creatures like the Darkspawn walk the Earth. Maybe one day, when they’re older, when the world is kinder, they can reunite…

For now, it’s just not meant to be.

It’s long past dinner by the time she leaves the library, and the snow has not let up in the slightest. The view through the windows is still the same white cloud as it was this morning while she ascends the floors of the palace to the King’s private chambers. There’s an uneasy tremble to her steps, so much so that she’s afraid her knees will give out beneath her, but she perseveres despite it. He would do the same for her, would that their roles were reversed.

The guards outside his bedroom part as she approaches, and they depart from the hall entirely when she hesitantly knocks on his door.

It eases open slowly, and she’s struck all of a sudden by how different he stands already at a glance. She was on bedrest for the first week after the Archdemon fight, weighed down by the wounds across her body and the bandages covering them, and since then they’ve both made an effort to avoid each other because neither knew what to say and it felt like they had all the time in the world to figure out what they eventually would. Now, she’s leaving for Antiva in the morning, and he will remain in Ferelden, and it will be months until she returns to the country and it may be years until she steps foot in Denerim again and she loves him too much to leave him a letter.

Even before the final battle, they didn’t speak much. Following the Landsmeet they were courteous to one another in public but paid the other no attention in private. The last conversation they really, truly had was the night _before_ the Landsmeet in the Arl’s Estate where they curled up in their shared bed and didn’t sleep, they only spoke in quiet voices about their affections for each other.

That feels like a century ago, now. She can barely remember what his voice sounds like anymore.

The tension in the room crackles as she steps inside, and briefly she thinks she might have cast lightning magic without even realizing it, but her hands – folded politely and stiffly behind her back – say otherwise. It is just as what she knows it to be – tension. That’s it. That’s all.

Alistair is the first of them to speak.

“Congratulations on the whole beating-the-Archdemon thing, by the way,” he says, his voice a cold replacement for his usual warm delivery. “Would’ve liked to have been there to see it, but… we can’t all have what we want, I suppose.”

“It was better for you to stay at the gate with the soldiers,” she protests, and he just shakes his head.

“It would have been better for me to come _with_ you,” he replies, “to protect you and make sure you stayed alive.”

“I _am_ alive.”

“Barely!” He shuts the door tightly behind her and it surprises her that he does not slam it, but it’s just a testament to the true nature of his gentleness, that even when he is upset he still never resorts to violence with someone who has betrayed him. Another reason he’s going to make a good king. “The knights – _m-my_ knights – carried you back to the palace unconscious. Do you remember what happened that night, Neva? Do you remember any of it?”

She doesn’t, truth be told. The beast had done a number on her. She’s not going to admit that to him, though.

“I do,” she lies, “and I’m fine.”

His face crumples. “But you might _not_ have been,” he whispers, taking a step closer to her and raising his hands as if he’s going to reach out to her before he drops them by his sides. “I… I was going to die for you, Neva, do you know that? I had a whole plan and everything.” A flash of something that isn’t anger crosses his face – regret, maybe? That he didn’t have the chance to? That he wanted to even after she turned on him? That he hasn’t told her before now? That he didn’t have the chance to do that, either?

“Which is why I kept you at the gate,” she seethes despite herself. “It was the best decision I could have made.”

“But you didn’t make it with _me_!” he responds. “I don’t understand, Neva. We’ve come to each other with everything. Everything and more, more than I ever thought I’d be able to tell anyone. And you didn’t tell me about your plans to make me king. You didn’t even ask me if I wanted it. Not for a long time, anyway.”

“I knew it would be best for the both of us.”

“And you always know best, is that right?” Alistair asks. “You think you’re the only one who can make a good decision? Did you know that one of us was supposed to die? Did you know that it’s a miracle one of us didn’t?”

She takes a step away from him, confused. “What?”

“Riordan came to me in Redcliffe,” he begins, his voice faltering as he begins his explanation though he pushes through it somehow. “He told me that for an Archdemon to be slain the warden slaying it must die, too. Something about the souls and… it doesn’t matter.” His bottom lip wobbles. “And I was coming to find you, and then Morrigan approached me…”

“Morrigan?” Neva repeats.

“She said that there was a ritual,” he continues, “and… well…”

It’s a long explanation, one that Neva only listens to half of because all of a sudden the world around her spinning and she doesn’t know what’s up or down anymore. She didn’t know one of them was supposed to die. He never told her.

 _That_ was why he fought her so strongly for the chance to accompany her to fight the Archdemon…

“In case it didn’t work, I wanted to be there,” he says. “And you denied me, and I thought… I _thought_ that was the last time I would get to see you…”

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

“Because there was nothing you could _do_ , Neva!” he exclaims. “There was nothing you could do! You already made me king, so the only thing left I could think of was ensuring that no matter what, you stayed alive to keep the Wardens alive, too, and then…” He shakes his head, running a hand through his neatly styled hair she knows he didn’t do himself. “To think that it might not have worked… and I sent you up there _alone_ … I’ve never been more scared in my life, Neva. To think I could have lost you...”

Her knees threaten to give out from underneath her and she stumbles, reaching for the doorknob to steady herself.

“And yet I did anyway,” he finishes slowly, meeting her eyes. “Or I will, tomorrow, when you leave for Antiva. Because you made me _king_.”

“And those sacrifices you were willing to make are what will make you a good king,” she replies. “Your willingness to give yourself for the happiness and health of your people –“

“I don’t – I don’t care about ‘my people’!” He catches himself and lowers his voice, probably assuming that there are guards outside his door who might overhear them. “You’re not one of my _people,_ Neva,” he continues quietly, “you’re not just a citizen of Ferelden to me, you’re my _person_! I…”

He falls silent.

“I love you,” he says softly, taking a step towards her from where she’s pressed herself against the wall for strength because she’s quickly realized she can no longer summon on any of her own. “I love you more than anything.”

“And you can’t,” she responds, “Alistair – _King_ Alistair - you _can’t_. We cannot afford to be selfish, we can’t afford to focus on ourselves when the Darkspawn are destroying Ferelden and will continue to destroy Thedas, when people like Loghain want power –“

“We’ve done it until now,” he whispers. “We did it throughout the Blight. What changed?”

“We did,” she answers. She says no more than that. She doesn’t really have an answer - she just knows, in her gut, that this is right. One day he will too.

It’s just going to ache for a long time first.

It’s dark outside, now. The sun has set. What little light there was outside during the day has disappeared, leaving the two of them standing in nothing more than the dim glow of orange candlelight and the fire blazing in the hearth. Despite it, the room still feels cold, and Alistair feels distant. Not that that is new. She should leave, return to her quarters, prepare for her departure tomorrow – and yet she doesn’t.

This might be the last time she ever sees him, she realizes, so she’ll let her savour this moment. The last selfish act she’ll ever commit.

There’s a scar on his jaw that she’s traced so many times with reverent fingers, and even now she still thinks his face looks like it’s been sculpted by the Maker himself. He’s so handsome, Alistair, and yet there’s still a softness to him and the angles of his jaw and his cheekbones. It’s what she’s always loved most about him. How he wears his heart on his sleeve and his emotions on his face so clearly and plaintively that there’s never any doubt how good of a person he really is.

She loves him more than anything, too, and she won’t say that. Hopefully the way she looks at him will suffice.

He moves across the room and when he reaches her, she places her hand on the centre of his chest, a touch defensive rather than delicate even when she feels the heavy pounding of his heart inside his chest. It is unfamiliar to try and shield herself from the man who helped her break down the walls she had built up in the first place, to push him away instead of pull him closer and hope she does it with enough conviction to stick. It’s an unknown, one of many – another being that she’s beginning to wonder if this will be worth it.

But the truth is that she may never know. She can only force herself – and him – to believe it anyway.

It doesn’t work, her effort to keep him away. Slowly, without taking his eyes away from her, Alistair grabs her hand and leads it to his mouth, pressing one kiss to her knuckles as a question and, when she makes no move to stop him, another as an answer, and he does this several times, his attention never wavering, never leaving her for a second.

And then suddenly she’s kissing him, and he’s kissing her, and he’s reaching down to grab her firmly by the backside and hold her tightly to him, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist, climbing into his arms soundly, silently, letting out nothing more than a gentle outward breath as he secures his arms around her, clutching her close even though there’s no distance left between them, kissing her quick even though there’s hours until either of them are needed and even then, even now, would it matter?

He starts walking backwards towards the bed and is about to lay her down on it and then she pulls away, short of breath, frowning.

“What?” he asks.

“Armor,” she says, and he looks down and he laughs.

“Ah, you’re right,” he replies, drawing his hands along her thighs until he’s cupping the backs of her knees and then he sits her down on the edge of the bed. “Sorry, I almost forgot about it.”

He starts undoing the laces of his armor the same time she does, her eyes trained on his face and his on hers all the while, and the second their breastplates and his gauntlets fall away they’re on each other again, Alistair fumbling with the ties of her pants while she attempts to wrangle his shirt off of him. They’re laughing like kids, giddy. It feels like the first time they slept together, which was so, so long ago.

And that, alone, feels like a sword to the heart.

They’re both half naked now and yet her lips slowly stop responding to his as her stomach sinks. He pays it no mind, however – instead he plants an uneven line of kisses down the side of her face, ending at her collarbone which he nibbles on while his hands work under her back to raise her higher so his mouth can have easier access to her breasts. She closes her eyes while he moves further downward, and by the time he’s panting against her stomach she’s clenching them so tightly shut that she can see stars amidst the darkness, and then and only then does Alistair stop.

She cracks open an eye to peer at him. “Neva?” he says, his face hovering above her underclothes.

“I’m okay,” she breathes. “I’m okay.”

“Are you –“

“Yes,” she replies. “Keep going. Please.”

She can’t stop. She won’t stop. If she stops she’s going to think about how bad of a decision this is and then this _will_ stop and it can’t. Not yet, anyway.

She’s missed the way her body responds to his like it does with nothing else.

He peels her underclothes down her thighs and her calves with his teeth, attention trained on her face all the while, and there’s little ceremony before he eases one of her legs over his shoulder and pulls her closer to him by the hips. She closes her eyes again just in time for his tongue to make contact with her folds and then she lets out a quiet whimper, hands flying to his head to clutch his hair before she pulls them away, raising them to her own head to plant them over her face so he can’t see her façade crumbling under the intensity of his now unfamiliar touch.

She remains like that in the darkness of her own making, thighs trembling, and only removes her hands when he asks her if she’s doing okay to respond with a gentle “yes”. She isn’t sure how long it is before she’s coming. Her legs tighten around his head and a string of needy groans are pulled from her lips and only when she feels his length brushing against her stomach does she allow herself to meet his gaze once more.

“Not here,” she says. He looks at her with concern, and she doesn’t give it an answer. She’s not going to make love to him in his king’s bed - she’s hesitant enough about doing it in his chambers. When she sits up to look around the room, she spots the roaring fire in the fireplace and the fur carpet in front of it, and points to it hurriedly.

“There,” she suggests, and he kisses her again as he slips his hands under her body and carries her there.

It’s much warmer there than it was across the room and still she’s sweating, already she’s sweating, and Alistair positions himself on top of her. When he abandons her lips to direct his attention to her neck and her jaw and her collarbones, she tilts her head up, back, away; when he lowers himself against her body, she flattens herself beneath him, as far and as deep into the fur as it allows; when he finally pushes into her, his cock whole and hot and familiar, her sex already slick and aching for him, she white-knuckles the stone floor instead of touching him and closes her eyes until all she sees is once again that darkness, pretending that they are both somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t here, and instead in their place are two people making love for a time that isn’t their last.

“I love you,” Alistair whispers into her ear before pressing an open-mouthed kiss beneath her earlobe.

“Oh, Alistair,” she says breathlessly, squeezing her eyes shut even tighter, “I love you, too.”

When they finish, she does not open her eyes. Not even when he begins to clean the insides of her thighs with a hot cloth does she look at him. She doesn’t need to look to know he’s crying; she doesn’t want to risk opening her eyes only for her to start crying, too. She’s already done it enough, and if she cries out any more tears that she doesn’t really have left in her, she’s afraid she’ll disintegrate, and then none of this would have been worth it.

He lies down beside her when he’s done and she curls up on her side, draping her arm over his chest and twining one of her legs around his to pull him closer and closer until his face is pressed to her chest. His hot breath washes over her skin in shallow waves, his hands are splayed open against her back to anchor himself against her, and right now, as they lie together intertwined in front of the fire, she cannot bring herself to regret this. In fact, all she can bring herself to regret is everything else. “I’m sorry,” she whispers into his sweaty skin.

An open-mouthed kiss graces the valley of her breasts before he buries his face even further against her. “I know,” he replies. “I am, too.”

Minutes pass, or perhaps years – perhaps even hundreds of them. Eventually, as slow as a corpse decays into a skeleton, the darkness she can see through the window pales to the baby blue light of morning. Alistair, asleep, remains peaceful in her arms, and she continues to run her fingers through the hair at the crown of his head, not yet content to wake him. The harshness of reality will eventually cut through them deeper than any winter chill, but the fire still roars for now.

But it doesn’t forever. Eventually she eases herself out of his grasp, padding across the stone floor to where her clothes lie discarded on the ground. She dresses in silence, not daring to look over at his sleeping form. If she does, she’ll be tempted to stay, and she can’t do that. The ship will be leaving the docks this evening, and she’s already bought her passage.

She does not wake him when she finishes. Instead she grabs her staff and creeps towards the door, deciding against throwing a blanket over him so he’s decent when the maids come in. Surely he will awaken soon enough, and she needs to get a move on before that happens.

When her hand touches the doorknob, however, she takes pause. Is she going to do this, really, to the man she loves? Disappear while he sleeps like a whisper on the wind, like nothing more than a shadow in his memory?

He makes the decision for her.

“Well, wait for me,” he scolds sleepily behind her, the fur of the rug rustling beneath his body as he stands.

She shuts her eyes. “Alistair –“

“Just a minute,” he says, “and then I’ll let you go.”

She says nothing and she certainly doesn’t turn around. All she does is stand there, one hand on the door.

He stands there for a while watching her once he’s ready. She knows because she can feel it, and she’s not surprised – if she were as strong as he was, as a brave as he was, she’d do the same. She couldn’t handle it now, though. She hears his robes swishing across the stone floor as he approaches her similar to how he approached her last night but calmer, this time, somehow, calm and accepting even though she’s sure every nerve within him is screaming for him not to be the way hers scream for her.

Alistair places his hand over top of hers and tangles their fingers together, spinning her around slowly until she can see him.

“You have a home here, should you need one,” he tells her, squeezing her hand as he tips his forehead against hers. “With me. If you want me.”

“Wanting you isn’t the question, Alistair,” she says.

“I know,” he replies, kissing her tenderly. “Still, the offer stands. And I’ll be waiting until you take me up on it. Even if I have to wait forever.”

“Alistair…”

“I love you,” he whispers. “I’ll always love you. I hope you know that.”

“I’ll always love you, too.”

They share one last teary kiss before she pulls away, and he stands still as she draws the door open, steps through it, and closes it behind her.

There is little to pack up in her room once she returns. Some clothes, some books, her boots and her travelling essentials. Zevran is waiting for her in Antiva City, or so his last letter said, but she’s sure he’ll find her once she arrives anyhow. 

She pulls her necklaces over her head until she can feel them heavy against her chest, and the last thing she does before leaving the room is tuck her rose pendant into her glove where it sits like a pearl in the palm of her hand. She had the flower encased in resin when they were in Orzammar so it would never die and so she could always carry it around with her, and she’s going to make good on that voiceless promise to herself. It’ll be nice to have a reminder of Alistair, anyway. Of what she left behind and how important the things she’s going to do in the future must be for her to have given that up.

When she leaves the palace that evening, escorted to the docks by a small group of knights, Alistair does not come to bid her goodbye. She looks back at the castle once more, though, before it disappears from view, and she likes to think she can see him standing at the window of his chambers, watching her leave, the weight of his duties finally setting in for him, too.

She opens her mouth to say ‘goodbye’, but he’s too far away to hear her, and she’s said it too many times this morning while he slept for it to mean anything anymore. Instead, it dies on her lips, and she turns around and continues her cold, lonely walk to the docks where her ship for Antiva awaits. 

**Author's Note:**

> AHHHH thank you for reading my very horribly sad fic... this is unfortunately the canon ending for neva and alistair's relationship, as much as it pains me. i hope it pains you too, though, so we can take this journey together!!!  
> this is my very late contribution to dragon 4ge day, and i didn't think i'd be writing my celebratory piece with this pairing, but i thought it was as good as any. i truly love this series so much and the people it's helped me meet. i love dragon age so much!!! thanks bioware!!!  
> and thanks for reading this fic!!! i hope you enjoyed. please leave a kudos or a comment if you liked it and reblog the original post if you can find it on tumblr on my blog @ trvelyans!!! and please go do something fun in my honour to make up for this Miserable adventure we took together tonight!!!


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